Robert James Dell’Oro Thomson (born 11 March 1961) is an Australian journalist and business executive. He has been the chief executive of News Corp since 2013.

Early life

Thomson was born in Torrumbarry, Victoria, and studied at Christian Brothers College in St Kilda East, and at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology.

Career

Thomson started work as a copyboy at The Herald (now the Herald Sun) in Melbourne in 1979. In 1983, he became senior feature writer for The Sydney Morning Herald, and two years later became Beijing correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald as well as the Financial Times. Thomson was appointed the Financial Times foreign news editor in 1994 In 1998, Thomson became U.S. managing editor of the Financial Times. He has been known to use alliterative expressions to call out those companies, such as platforms for "the fake, the faux and the fallacious", and "tech tapeworms." Thomson called for new terms of trade for tech platforms to allow viable business models for creators and to benefit broader society.

In May 2008, he was appointed managing editor of The Wall Street Journal, having previously been the editor of The Times.

He received an honorary doctorate from RMIT University in 2010.

In January 2013, Thomson became the chief executive of News Corp. have called for compensation by tech companies that are developing and employing AI. Speaking in May 2023 at INMA, a media conference, Thomson summed up the industry's outrage, saying "[media's] collective IP is under threat and for which we should argue vociferously for compensation."  He said that AI was "designed so the reader will never visit a journalism website, thus fatally undermining that journalism."

In June 2025, it was reported that News Corp had extended Thomson's contract as its chief executive until June 2030. He is married to Wang Ping, the daughter of a general in the Chinese People's Liberation Army.

References

  • Robert Thomson lecture online: From the editorial desk of The Times, RMIT School of Applied Communication Public Lecture series

__NOTOC__